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signed

oil on canvas

Executed in 1961.
PROVENANCE

Michel Tapié, Paris
Renato Morbidelli, Turin
Serafina Petruno, Turin
Finarte, Milan
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 1979

EXHIBITED

Buenos Aires, Centro des Artes Visuales, Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, Intuiciones y realizaciones formales, 1964, no. 15, illustrated
Turin, Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna, Lucio Fontana, 1970, no. 220, fig. 207, illustrated

LITERATURE AND REFERENCES

Enrico Crispolti, Lucio Fontana Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. II, Brussels 1974, p. 110, no. 61 O 32, illustrated
Giulio Bolaffi, Ed.,Catalogo Nationale d'Arte Moderna, n.15, Vol. I, Turin 1979, p. 107, illustrated
Enrico Crispolti, Lucio Fontana: Catalogo Generale, Vol. I, Milan 1986, p. 367, no. 61 O 32, illustrated
CATALOGUE NOTE

Lucio Fontana's trip to Venice during 1961 in preparation for his exhibition at the Venice Biennale later that year inspired the artist to produce a series of 24 so-called Venezia paintings. Widely regarded as the creative apogee of his career, the dramatic colours, arrestingly individual compositions and rich surface textures that distinguish these celebrated works, mark a seminal moment in the development of his mature artistic vision.

Executed simultaneously with the Venezia cycle, the present work witnesses the fruitful union of the artist's spatial experiments from the 1950s with his recent ventures in oil paint, whose thicker, heavier form and light reflecting surfaces had re-awakened the sculptor in Fontana. The dense surface has been built up with layer upon layer of thick paint, creating a heavy, textured skin onto which Fontana has imposed a matrix of fluid sweeping gestures with his hands and fingers. These energised painterly marks seem to orbit around the centre of the composition and dramatically frame the purity of the shimmering silver circle against the dark and impenetrable expanse of the picture plane.

The present work also further consolidates Fontana's ongoing series of cuts or Attese, which are here used in conjunction with and also as a counterfoil to the fluid and dynamic painterly surface. Now able to convey space and movement across the entire picture plane through colour and surface as well as gesture, these delicate vertical cuts break through the canvas with a real sense of power and depth, becoming themselves rapid streaks of energy that seem to originate from the inner core of the composition.

Concetto Spaziale represents Fontana's Spazialismo at its best. The restraint of the vertical slashes within the arrestingly perfect symmetry of the circle - a shape symbolic with the completeness of the world - invigorates the monumental composition with an awesome sense of scale and mystery. The framing of the artist's signature gestures within a shimmering and mercurial expanse of silver is a testament to the Baroque sensuality of Fontana's handling of paint; one that seems to ebb and flow across the surface of the canvas like the aqueous reflections from the depths of the Venetian canals.

Like many great artists before him, the intoxicating beauty and sensuous drama of the Venetian lagoon-scape had aroused in Fontana new levels of visual awareness and perception, manifest in the overwhelming balance, scale and unity of the composition. The thickly textured, fluid surface of the swirling black abyss expands vigorously across the picture plane and is dynamically balanced by the suspended perfect symmetry of the moon-like silver circle. Together these opposing yet complimentary elements represent a profound and poetic metaphor for the precariousness of Venice as it rests majestically isolated on the ever encroaching lagoon.

The meditative symmetry of the composition lends Concetto Spaziale a universal authority. The ability of Fontana's best work and often simplest gestures to enrich themselves with numerous, often unrelated layers of context is beautifully conveyed here. As well as being inspired by his recent experiences of Venice, the present work also evokes the artist's fascination with the mysteries of space and matter. Throughout his work, Fontana sought to express the unexplored depths of the universe through poetic metaphor, and executed in the same year as Yuri Gagarin's momentous first manned flight into space, Concetto Spaziale can be interpreted as one of the artist's most poignant considerations on the galactic majesty of the universe.